A new exhibition is to open celebrating 100 years of Edinburgh Zoo

EDINBURGH ZOO is 100 years old this year and its history will be celebrated in an exhibition opening to the public on Wednesday.

The gates of the zoo first opened to the public on July 22, 1913, four years after the Zoological Society was established by Edinburgh lawyer Thomas Gillespie.

During his time as the zoo's first director he welcomed Scotland's first giraffe, provided a home for Wojtek the brown bear who carried ammunition for Polish troops during the Second World War and also introduced penguins in 1914 which have proved popular with visitors for 99 years.

For almost 60 years Tom Wood, 63, has been visiting the zoo and as a policeman in the 1970s he attended a number of zoo-related incidents, including the retrieval of escapee wallabies from neighbouring gardens.

On one occasion Mr Wood was called to a house in the city where a lion had been spotted. It belonged to an exotic dancer who used to perform with the animal in bars.

"We got into the house and right enough here is a half grown lioness in the back garden being fed on dozens of tins of cat food and huge pans of milk by its owner who was a go-go dancer," he said.

"The go-go dancer and the lion had both, quite some time ago, lost their youthful appearance, shall we say. The lion had outgrown the act, it had been used as a cub and the poor thing had rickets because it hadn't been properly fed," said Mr Wood. He explained that the lioness later became a resident of the zoo.

Initially, the zoo gave people the opportunity to see wild animals in the flesh but over the years the zoo has had to evolve a wider remit in response to a changing world, according to Chris West, CEO of the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland.